3 Rants, 3 blogs, 3 weeks, Part 2. Produce?

Produce…..

Every year there is more and more chefs/restaurateurs/food writers/bloggers and so on, harping on about produce and the provenance of it.

This is somewhat of a mystery to me. Firstly I don’t believe for one minute that these people flying the home grown produce flag practice what they preach half as much as they claim to. I would love to follow these self-proclaimed Provenance warriors around Tesco and look at the crap they put in there trollies to feed themselves and their families. Of course there are exceptions to the rule but most of them are just jumping on the politically correct band wagon and making noise because it’s the current trend. These are the some group of people who tried to make spherical stars a few years ago and are now balancing steaks on twigs and pebbles and serving it with sea vegetables and foraged dangle berries. Its madness!

Chefs need to bring our attention back to their core business of cooking and the ability to make food taste nice. Get off the bandwagon a go back to basics. Who cares if the Quail comes from a biodynamical farm on the outskirts of Skibbereen if you completely make a balls of cooking it. I don’t believe any chef out there became a chef because they wanted to raise awareness of Billy Barry’s turnips. There is absolutely nothing wrong with mentioning it as it’s nice to help out a neighbour but at this stage you are nearly ostracized if you don’t.

Both in Cleaver East and Bon Appetit we support all our neighbours and buy the best tasting produce possible. As a personal belief I always support local as I hope the locality will support me but only if all things are equal and as a chef I’m tired of being pressured into being some sort of echo warrior.  I’m not, I never have been and it’s never been my mission to be, it is my mission to provide the best tasting food in the most comfortable environment for the lowest possible price and I will never sacrifice standards just because some warrior wants me to mention Billy’s turnips!